


darkness before dawn

by deepandlovelydark



Series: count to ten and run for cover (B-sides) [4]
Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Angel's Leather Gloves, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Starvation, Trapped, Tuco's Duluth Bag, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 17:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: because Blondie's always craved his martyrdom, that's a given-but Tuco's always figured he'd know, when it was time to run(too late now)





	darkness before dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Syb asked once what the original format of Bleeding was gonna look like. Before soft Angel Eyes/Tuco started happening.
> 
> It was gonna be rather less pleasant, is what.

His pack’s gone.

There’s no comforting shape at the foot of the bed. There’s no weight at the end of the rope tied to his wrist, because there is no rope. Tuco's very nearly grateful.

At least that proves he’s not going crazy.

*********

“Blondie, tell me we’re leaving.”

It’s taken him the better part of two hours to find his partner, and the house is nowhere near that big- certainly not from the outside- only he keeps getting lost. And these days, his partner feels safer when he’s hiding. 

“No.”

“Please, Blondie. Please.”

There’s words he won’t say in the confines of these walls, words saying how frightened and tired and bewildered he is- but please, that much he can say.

Blondie closes the volume, looks at him with tired capitulation. “Tuco, don’t you get it? If we leave, he’ll just follow and bring us back. And it’ll get us hurt, if we do that.”

“No- no.” That can’t happen. This is America, they haven’t done anything wrong.

“Tuco, I got us into this. I don’t know how to get us out. I have no idea….please, don’t do anything that’ll make him hurt you. I don’t think I could stand that.”

And it’s left to him to hold his shaking partner, while Blondie weeps tears into his hair and begs for his forgiveness.

He gives it.

If he didn’t there wouldn’t be anything left.  

*********

This is what sex with Blondie is: hot desperate greed, clenching each other fast in absolute need. Simple physical contact serving in lieu of all their appetites, and as good as lust is, that’s too much to expect.

He fucks and is fucked and tightens the rope around Blondie’s neck with more relish every time, caught up in his partner’s absolute passion, drowning in the hot wash of that desire. It makes him feel alive again, and he misses that so badly.

This is what sex with Blondie always was- but parts of it, only parts. He remembers it also being soft, and funny, and the two of them being alone and not giving a damn for anybody but each other.

(Will Angel Eyes ever come out to join them, from where he watches behind that mirror?)

(Would it make it better or worse?)

*********

“Just a midnight snack, what’s so wrong about that? I’m hungry.”

Blondie’s good at eating Angel’s soup and looking as if he enjoys it, to the point of keeping up a parody of regular dinnertime banter at the same time - there’s days when it feels like his partner’s talking for their lives- and it’s hard for him to eat enough, under conditions like that.

“Not if Angel Eyes doesn’t want you to,” Susan returns, with enough quiet in her voice that Tuco feels his heart leap. If she’s afraid too, maybe that’s something they can work with, maybe she can help-

“He helped me murder my husband. So you can see, I owe him a favour or two.”

Oh.

There goes that plan, then.

*********

“ _Second_ declension, Blondie, not first!”

And then the slap of a book, hard against a table.  

Tuco hovers outside of the library, uncertain. Blondie being who he is, he might very well be making himself a target for the sake of holding Angel’s attention. So it’s not directed elsewhere.

(It’s a very plausible reason for not doing anything. He could almost say he believes it.)

*********

“You’re devout?”

A fair enough question, when he’s on his knees. “Not really.”

It surprises him, that his voice remains so steady; but his body doesn’t want to die any more than he does and it forces him through situations like this, thinking himself alone and then feeling a familiar black glove on the back of his neck. “Childhood habits, I guess.”

“Oh? Blondie mentioned a brother who became a priest.”

“I am never talking about him,” Tuco snaps, with such force he expects Angel to slaughter him on the spot.

But it seems to impress the assassin.

He leaves without another word; and Tuco whispers a whole pleading rosary, that Angel will never be bored enough to go hunting for priests named Paul.

*********

 _Jacob y Esau._  A lifetime, for a bowl of pottage.

God, he can’t sleep any more without waking up with hunger. At least when they watch movies he gets a decent feed first; it annoys Angel, to have dialogue drowned out by empty growls.

They don’t watch nearly enough movies for Tuco’s liking.

*********

“An accident at the cleaner’s, I’m told,” Angel Eyes says, with something that might be taken for regret.

Tuco stares at it, the bright colours of his shirt bleached out to nothing. That was his last one; there’s positive mountains of clothes in this place, black sweaters and white trousers, and they’re all too big and none of them look right on him at all.

He wears this one as much as he can, because bleached or not at least it’s his.

*********

“This looks all wrong,” Blondie says, running a hand over his hip (with his eyes closed, this almost feels like normal, and he could wish his partner would just shut up). “Not enough flesh there, you’re losing weight.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” It’s too much like admitting this is happening, especially when Angel’s listening. “Get on with fucking me, before I pass out.”

“I wonder if that wouldn’t be kinder.”

He wonders too, but a kind thing isn’t going to happen, just because he wishes for it.

*********

“You know, I let him go the first time,” Angel Eyes says. “A boon from the gods, which he decided to squander rather foolishly. You’re just caught up in it, that’s all.”

“I’m not the help,” Tuco says, dull but doggedly. “Maybe I have some notions of my own.”

It’s the first time, he thinks, that Angel’s looked to see him; and it’s hard to meet that gaze but he manages.

“Give me a reason,” Angel Eyes says. “Tell me why you’re more interesting than he is.”

Hustler against hustler. He can see why Angel’s amused, pitting them against each other like that.

He’s too afraid, not to do the best he can.

*********

“Blondie?”

“Yeah?”

“How long do you think this will go on?”

“Decades? I don’t know,” Blondie mumbles, holding him with a limp lack of desire- it’s not so good being together like this anymore, when their constant onlooker isn’t on hand to spur the action. “As long as Angel’s amused by us, I guess.”

“I can’t live like this. Blondie, I can’t.”

“I know.”

*********

It happens.

It was bound to happen; his instincts failing at last, too much sensation scorching its path through a frame not strong enough to support it anymore. His vision was already fading around the edges when they’d started, starry-eyed horror, and his body’s so attuned now to the only joy he has left. He blacks out the same time Blondie does.

Blondie’s not besides him anymore, when Tuco comes out of it.

“You know, I like you,” Angel calls. “You go have a word with Susan. Get yourself a cup of coffee.”

He doesn’t even stop long enough to look at the body Angel’s holding, limp as the dangling rope. Just hurries down to the kitchen, where Susan seems to have been expecting him. The coffee’s hot. There’s pound cake.  

It ought to make him sick, but he manages to hold it down.

*********

“Gloves. You bought me gloves.”

Sounding faint to himself, but Angel won’t know the difference. Won’t ever know the difference.

Angel Eyes nods, holds them out. “I think you’ve earned them.”

Tuco nods. Slips them on. Soft as night air, against his skin.

“Thank you.”

(God help him, he thinks he means it.)


End file.
